Changes in Physical Activity Among University Students in Indonesia from Before to During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Retrospective Cohort Study

Abstract

University life is an important phase for forming healthy physical activity habits among university students. However, little is known about the change in physical activity level during the COVID-19 pandemic among university students in Indonesia, which has a low stringency index. A retrospective cohort study was conducted among students of Universitas Gadjah Mada (n=153) from October to November 2020, where there were asked to recall their physical activity level and type of physical activity engaged in at four points of time: before the pandemic, early pandemic, Ramadan period, and relaxation period. Then, we conducted three-way mixed analyses of variance followed by Bonferroni’s post hoc comparisons tests to compare the mean difference of total moderate-vigorous physical activity with a subject over time and between subgroups in a similar time. Containment measures during the pandemic resulted in a 69.4-minute drop (95% confidence interval: 40.1 to 98.7 minutes, p<.001) of total moderate-vigorous physical activity. While the relaxation of containment measures could restore non-health natural science students’ physical activity to the pre-pandemic amount, it did not influence health science students’ physical activity. Our findings provide evidence that pandemic situations in a low stringency index country also affected physical activity behavior among university students. More efforts are needed to increase university students’ physical activity during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among health science students.

Applying the behavior change wheel to identify pandemic-related attitudes and feelings about physical activity as predictors of physical activity level among university students in Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Our study also strengthens that BMI and field of study are important predictors of PA among university students. This study strengthens our previous research on the early pandemic, which found an increase in PA among non-health natural sciences students compared to the other fields of study (Rizal and Wibowo, 2021). However, our current study contradicts the majority of previous studies showing that overweight and obese adults were associated with lower PA levels (Haynes et al, 2018).…”

“…However, it could be caused that the opportunity lost was compensated by the more available time to engage in PA since the majority of our samples felt that they had more time to be physically active (Yon et al, 2022). In addition, most of our samples also felt they did not lose their enjoyable PA types, which indicate they could engage in their favorite PA or find new PA routines even if they lost opportunities to engage in certain kind of PA, such as sports (Rizal and Wibowo, 2021;Yon et al, 2022).…”

“…We also visually presented the proportion of the scale of the agreement to each attitude and feeling related to PA and coronavirus. We calculated the Pearson chi-square to examine the association of potential confounding, including gender, BMI, and field of study (Rejali and Mostajeran, 2013;Naim et al, 2016;Chung et al, 2018;Haynes et al, 2018;Rizal and Wibowo, 2021), using the SPSS v26 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, US). Finally, a logistic regression using an alpha of p < 0.05 was conducted to examine the odds ratio of each theme of the attitudes and feelings related to PA and coronavirus as predictors of meeting the PA guidelines with and without controlling gender, BMI, and field of study as confounders.…”

“…A longitudinal study suggests that pandemic-related attitudes and feelings could be a predictor factor influencing PA levels (Sport England, 2020). While recent studies showed that general individual and environmental factors, such as perceived general benefits of PA and field of study, and pandemicrelated individual and social factors, such as self-efficacy in being physically active despite barriers during the COVID-19 pandemic, were strong correlates of PA during the COVID-19 pandemic among university students in Indonesia, there was no study examined the comprehensive pandemic-related attitudes and feelings toward PA which including individual, social and environmental factors (López-Valenciano et al, 2021;Rizal and Wibowo, 2021;Ruhayati et al, 2021;Arovah, 2022;Cruz et al, 2022). Also, the two studies in Indonesia resulted from a majority sample of sport science students, which limit their generalizability to university students (Ruhayati et al, 2021;Arovah, 2022).…”

The COVID-19 Health Protocol among University Students: Case Studies in Three Cities in Indonesia

“…Physical exercise has the lowest mean score compared to other daily health practices. Another study found that the frequency of physical exercise among students decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic, e.g., in Europe and Northern America [ 39 ] and also in Indonesia [ 40 ]. Therefore, relevant health promotion is needed so that students can be physically active during the pandemic in order to increase their healthy immune system.…”